


Noons of dryness find you fed

by gogollescent



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-09
Updated: 2015-09-09
Packaged: 2018-04-19 20:43:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4760387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gogollescent/pseuds/gogollescent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Beleriand at peace? It seems a beast of legend.”</p><p>“Then this is about the alliance,” she said, flatly, relenting and coming nearer, out of the echoey yonder of doubt. “You will say that the beast could come again, I will say you would immediately shoot it. May we, likewise, skip ahead to our quarrel?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Noons of dryness find you fed

“She’s almost as old as our father,” said Curufin, probably in tones of lazy malice. Or veiled disdain? Celegorm had given up checking.

“Is she? How do you know?”

“I asked.”

“Isn’t that a bit, oh…” Celegorm twirled a finger upside-down to simulate the confidence of an adjective.

“You’re thinking of mortal women,” said Curufin. Apparently the finger had worked. “Although, in fact, I asked Orodreth. He contains untold depths, all of them related to calendar-making.”

Celegorm, who had lost interest at the word ‘Orodreth,’ brooded on the question of Lúthien’s advanced age.

“Hasn’t done much, has she?” he said at last.

*

Except, of late, haunt Nargothrond. They had given her a wing to herself, which had but one entrance: Huan guarded that door unasked. His usual good sense—though sometimes he sat beneath the latch and howled. Did he think she had escaped him? Like a treed animal, doomed, yet withholding itself. Stealing beauty that belonged to the hunter.

In the tunnels and throne room Celegorm sometimes thought he’d scared her out of all concealment: he would “see” her flitting from pillar to pillar, bat-quick, or standing behind a servant’s shoulder, the better to feast on their whispers. There were plenty of moths here. _Felagund_ and _Beren_ —dusky brown wishes that rose to be caught. And her captivity was a cloak, darker and finer than what they had taken. Cry out the right words, and she would draw back the folds of an empty room; consenting, as prey does consent, she’d move with senseless pride into the silence of the open.

But in her chamber, beside her, speaking of glory, he wondered whether she existed at all. She turned to him with a clay lamp in one hand, and said, “Where is my cousin?”

He had no intention of bringing her to the surface until Thingol blessed their union. He didn’t even dream of it, exactly. It was unjust that she should be garbled without the morning sky to read her. She, child of the Thousand Caves, had for _several_ sleepy ages—apparently—been accounted fair beneath Varda’s low vault. It didn’t strike him as likely that she should live in perfect happiness, gain light, and lose the skill to do without it. The lamp in her hand tottered; she was careless of the oil. It brimmed, sloped, and leveled, hung from the steadier stalk of the flame. How pale she was, now that she was golden: a split in this deep darkness, or in the sealskin on a plum…

“Born before the Girdle,” he said aloud, taking the light—sitting at her neglected vanity. He pondered for a moment as to why Curufin hadn’t offered her a Fëanorian lamp, and then stopped pondering. “I would I had seen Eglador in such fair times.”

“What?”

“Beleriand at peace? It seems a beast of legend.”

“Then this is about the alliance,” she said, flatly, relenting and coming nearer, out of the echoey yonder of doubt. “You will say that the beast could come again, I say you would immediately shoot it. May we, likewise, skip ahead to our quarrel?”

Curufin was really better at talking to her, even when that meant he was talking to Orodreth. In some ways Celegorm found her inscrutability a relief. He could, to pick an example at random, persuade the people of Nargothrond to lay down their arms for fear; but he hadn’t enjoyed it much, beyond the pleasure of mastery—he had little liking for conversation. His bungling matters with Lúthien meant he had no part in the slow work of bringing her round.

At other times the distance was awful. He lacked a real name for the feeling that had flourished him, shaken him out like a flag, when he saw her exposed in the sun; he called it love because it was unfamiliar, and tried not to summon it back. It crept on him, in other guises: it tugged at his corners, smoothing him flat.

“In fact I wished to ask about your childhood,” he said, glancing over his shoulder at the mirror.

“You came to my rooms in the middle of the night to ask about my childhood?”

“Yes! What?”

She was amused. She leaned forward and retrieved the lamp. “Nothing, prince. What would you like to know?”

“I have thought of something, rather,” he said, trying for an airy tone. “You’re half-Maia. It’s ridiculous. Miraculous, that is. Does it affect your growth rate?”

She stared at him.

He backtracked. “What I _mean_ is, you’re a woman at the height of your powers, by the reckoning of the Eldar. You might have married an age ago. Founded a separate kingdom.”

“And so escaped you,” she said, with renewed interest.

“By a single marriage? You forget who my grandfather was!” He smiled, more relaxed. “But that wasn’t what I thought to suggest. Rather, I wondered if—among the Ainur—”

“I was a babe in arms?”

“Not an infant, obviously.” He gave her a frank once-over, almost a respectful inclination of the head: here they were, alone underground, each knowing the other’s purposes—the kind of serious understanding they had last come close to when Huan chased her between the trees. Stories about her childhood, yes! She didn’t seem to feel the same. Her lip curled, and she thrust high the lamp; oil spilled. Not a sound from her throat. He leaped up, and she drew back, contemptuous, her wrist not trembling.

“It’s true,” she said. “I am very young.”

“It doesn’t hurt?” he said in wonder. “You can’t burn?” Outside, Huan had begun to cry and scratch at the door—sensing some expenditure of divine power, maybe, knowing that it must be contained; but the snuffling, in the dark, blew on Celegorm. It was the wind that once had spread the slack silk of his chest.

“Don’t be more of an idiot than you can help,” said Lúthien. She adjusted her grip on the light. Across her wrist, her thumb, her hand, he saw the splashed bright skin grow red.


End file.
